


Dollars to Doughnuts Or, The Call of the Wildebeeste

by executrix



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-27
Updated: 2011-04-27
Packaged: 2017-10-18 17:28:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/191402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An idyllic day at the county fair, somewhat spoiled by an unwelcome visitor. Gnus don't kill people, people kill people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dollars to Doughnuts Or, The Call of the Wildebeeste

1  
Things had been fairly calm of late. Inara thought that, after several months of nearly back-to-back appointments (she could hear Jayne's snigger in her head when she thought that, which was reason enough to take drastic measures), she could afford to treat herself. Even after the cessation of her auxiliary source of income.

She groused a little, pro forma, about the amount of time Serenity would be spending on Biltmoore. Shepherd Book reached into the drawstring pouch that held his humble possessions, and managed to find enough coins to convince Mal to take him to Star of the Sea Cathedral in Biltmoore City, where he said a friend of his was being installed as Archbishop. Mal, in response to begging from his crew (all right, from Kaylee) agreed to shore leave at the Demi-Centennial Exposition

It was true that while they were there, Inara would be unlikely to be able to arrange any work for herself—particularly since Biltmoore rejoiced in the presence of a Companion, but perhaps even that could be turned to her advantage.

2  
"Mal. Greaves," River said at the breakfast table.

"Over what?" Simon asked.

"His shins," River said. Simon took the statement, turned it upside down and shook it a few times, but couldn't come up with much. "You'll be all right with Jayne, won't you?"

"I sure will," River said. "All I have to do is give him a **look** and he'll shape up."

"Kaylee, how pretty you look," Simon said, noting the pink ribbon in her hair and the matching glimmer on her lips.

"Cleaned myself up 'cause you're gonna take me to the fair," she said.

"Oh," Simon said. "I didn't think that…uhhm, a country fair, not really my idea of fun, and I was hoping that there'd be some peace and quiet here so I could stay here and get a good night's, well, afternoon's, sleep." Kaylee bit her lip, but the longing on Simon's face (he looked like a barefoot urchin standing outside a pastry shop on Christmas Eve) was so naked that Kaylee couldn't find it in her heart to deny him. "Sure," she said. "More cotton candy for me, then."

"Wash," Mal said as he walked in and drained the last of Zoe's coffee. "Take the bridge, and keep your wits about you. We might need to toodle-oo in a powerful hurry."

"I didn't even think we were doing anything illegal," Wash said.

"No more ain't we, but a man can't be too careful nowadays," Mal said. "Zoe? You comin'? Wanna see a passel of livestock?"

"It's all right, sir. You can take Jayne with you. Sooner stay here with my man."

3  
Inara, who after all had supervised the touch-ups to her own head shots, made allowances for a little cosmetic improvement in the Biltmoore Companion's cortexsite. Nevertheless, Inara found the wide-set eyes and soft wide mouth beneath the black pixie-cut hair beguiling. She booked an afternoon appointment with Basilea (just the one name…something that Inara found pretentious but not enough to be offputting).

Inara carried a satin drawstring bag with her favorite massage oil and a few of her favorite toys. Even on an outpost like this, a Companion would maintain a fully stocked boudoir, but, Inara decided, why risk disappointment?

"Ah, Madame Serra," Basilea said. "Welcome!" Her apartments were coldly decorated in pale tones of mint, blue, and ice-white, with the large, spare rooms looking even larger because of the plethora of mirrors. Even the welcoming beverage was a bottle of aquavit frozen into an ice block, not a pot of hot tea.

Inara paused, the tiny glass halfway to her lips. In person, the cosmetic changes were not enough to conceal Basilea's…or whatever her name was'…identity. "I knew Mal should have shot you while he had the chance!"

"Well, I'll be sure to wave in an alert to Customs about that rowboat of his." Inara stood stock-still for a moment, wondering if Saffron even knew about the Tams.

Inara turned her back (with some trepidation) taking her drawstring bag with her. Regretting that the afternoon of presumed delights had, of course, been paid for in advance, she rushed out the door to find Mal and warn him.

4  
"Hey!" Kaylee said. Her lips were lime-green with cotton candy. "Seen the seven-ought-two hopper block mods at the Palace of Avionautics? I got a postcard for Wash. Naah, I guess that wouldn't do much for ya. Been over to see the Menagerie yet?"

"Just on our way," River said.

"Dunno if they treat the animals good, though. There was this real thin lion."

"Oh," River said. "Was it between Love and Hate?"

5  
River stood in the menagerie tent, placidly munching on cheese curds. She wore a foam-rubber hat with a tube running between her mouth and the can of Blue Sun Cola perched on top of her head. Jayne won the hat for her at the shooting gallery; she agreed with him that it would draw the wrong kind of attention if she won it for herself. Suddenly, her face clouded. "Got to go!" she said, staccato. She swallowed, and dropped the empty striped snack bag. "Inara's looking for us. Mal's in trouble!"

"Must be Tuesday," Jayne said. "Damn, the mule's out in the Free Parking lot, that's five kliks from here."

River took a couple of steps back and leaped over the low fence in front of the exhibit. "Head on over there," River said. "Intercept Inara's trajectory. I'll ride her and go find Mal."

"That thing safe?" Jayne asked.

"Gnus don't kill people," River said, vaulting on to the beast's back over its horns and pointing it in the direction of the tent flap. "People kill people."

6  
Even in a comparatively casual-Friday outfit of cashmere salwar kamiz, and wearing none of her best jewels and only her third-best perfume, Inara stood out in the fairgrounds, and crowds parted respectfully in her wake. Fortunately she wore kitten-heeled mules and not teetering four-inch spike heels, but even so she was glad to see the mule and even glad to see Jayne and his presumed armory.

And, of course, there was only one barefoot girl (combat boots slung around her neck by the laces) bareback-riding a gnu, so **she** was easy to find. "Hop on board!" Jayne told River.

"No, you will be needed for a diversionary tactic," River said. "Mal's in that building over there, by the way. In a room with a blue door. It says 'Craft Services.'"

7  
"Oh, dear Mother of God…" Inara said.

Jayne stopped, simply boggled at the prospect before him. Mal stood at Parade Rest on a small stage. His nipples had hardened in the chilly air, a fact that was pellucidly clear because Mal wore nothing but a pair of sandals, metal shin guards, and a helmet with an upstanding brush and a front piece that paralleled Mal's nose.

"The cold air is getting out," sniped the stout middle-aged woman in front of the stage. "Be on one side of the door or the other. Won't break my heart if it's 'tother." She wore round tortoise-shell spectacles and a pale blue smock that came nearly up to the last flounce of her skirt, ending just a foot or so above her sandals. She held a curiously shaped knife, whose function became clear when both Mal and his foot-high replica—emerging half-carved from a gigantic slab of butter—were simultaneously in view.

When he saw Inara, Mal whipped off the helmet and held it in front of him. "Mal! Run!" Jayne said.

"Every job he gotta shout out my name," Mal muttered. "And, exactly why? Ain't dressed for it, case you ain't noticed."

"It's **your wife** " Inara said, with some asperity. "She's here. And she's looking for you."

With a celerity that made Jayne wonder how often he'd had to do it before, Mal jumped into his pants, stuffed in a foot per boot, and grabbed the rest of his clothes. River was right outside the side door of the Artistic Chautauqua Building. "Ride pillion!" River shouted, as her heel urged an odd-looking beast toward Mal. Mal plunked his folded clothes as a pad underneath him as he climbed aboard the beast.

"Hey, cute girl at four o'clock," Jayne said, as Basilea hove into view and pulled the throwing star around her neck from its chain.

"That's Saffron, you….you…." Inara began.

"Don't go insultin' no one that's got your back, 'Nara. You want me to shoot her?" Jayne asked, crouching to retrieve Muscarea from his boot.

"Don't! It'll draw far too much attention and raise too many questions we can't answer."

"Leastways, we can drop back out of range of that ninja gadget she's got."

They headed for the higher ground of a six-inch-high brick wall dividing the paths. "The whorin's mighty colorful in this part of the world," Jayne said.

"You have no idea," Inara said, selecting an item from her drawstring bag, retrieving it once she got the drop on Saffron and stunned her. She helped Jayne tip Saffron into the koi pond, and they returned to the mule before a crowd could gather to haul her out.

8  
"Now, that weren't hard," Jayne said, "For more than one 'it'. C'mon, Inara, drive this thing back to the ship and we'll pick up Mal and River 'long the way."

By simple algebra ("If there is one road leading out of the Fairgrounds, and a heavily laden and poorly domesticated gnu can go eight miles an hour, and a mule can go sixty miles an hour, except in a traffic jam…") interception soon occurred. "This everybody all accounted for?" Mal asked, thirsting for the opportunity to give an order for a change.

"Kaylee!" Jayne said, counting on his fingers {{Me, 'Nara, Moonbrain, Numbnuts….}} and reaching the thumb.

"Well, go back and find her, make sure she's OK. River, can you get us back to the ship?" She turned her head just enough to roll her eyes at Mal, then grabbed onto the horns, handlebar style, and yodeled, "Hi-yo, Silver! And away!"

Inara and Jayne found Kaylee in the pavilion with the prize-winning entries, staring mesmerized at the Needlework blue ribbon winner. It was an elaborate wedding gown, with puffed sleeves and a bell skirt quilted all over with wheatsheaves. The dressmaker's dummy was headless, but a white Stetson, trailing clouds of tulle, sat on top of where the neck would be.

"Kaylee!" Inara shouted through the tent flap, slowing down the mule. "Come on! We've got to get out of here!"

Jayne reached out his arms and lifted Kaylee onto the seat. Kaylee put her hand to her forehead and squinted. "Huh!" she said. "What-all are River 'n' Mal ridin' up ahead?"

9  
"Y'know, River, we coulda made better time just walkin' than bareback ridin' on….well, whatever this is."

"More style points," River said. "And here we are home again."

"Don't even think on it," Mal told River, as they slid down. River, regret written in every line of her body, patted the gracile beast's rump and whispered, "Go on home, Fluffy."

"Wash!" Mal shouted into the comm. "We're back early! Everyone else here? I see the mule's where it oughtta be"

"Yeah," Wash said. "Inara brought Kaylee and Jayne in."

"Shiny. Now get us movin', we'll come back for the Shepherd once the hoo-raw dies down."

Simon responded instantly to the sound of a pager—anyone's pager—and tuck-rolled out of bed. He pulled a pair of trousers off a hanger and donned them directly over his sleep pants, his feet busy finding shoes as he grabbed a shirt. He arrived in the cargo bay, where he and Mal buttoned shirts in mirror-image. Simon sought out River, then checked to see that everyone else was back and, reportedly, uninjured.

River and Mal were walking upright, and (he had gotten fairly expert in distinguishing between blood spatter and transfer and his patients' bleeding on their own account) appeared to be uninjured. Certainly, as Simon scanned Mal's torso as it vanished beneath the shirt, there were no bullet holes or knife slashes to be seen, although both Mal's trousers and River's denim skirt bore traces of some kind of animal hair.

Simon yawned and tried to focus. "Well, you're back early! Did you have a good time?"

"Oh, yes!" River said enthusiastically. "Jayne won this hat for me and that girl with the short legs and big rack turned up again but her hair and her name were different so a woman who looked like a toad or then again your piano teacher couldn't turn Mal into tiger butter and then Inara hit the girl with a boomerang dildo and Jayne kicked her ass and knocked her into the koi pond."

"Ask a stupid question…" Simon said.

"Okay, people, we're outta here," came Wash's voice over the comm.

10  
"Mal," Inara asked, "Precisely why, other than your general oleaginous quality, were you standing there in the altogether being memorialized in dairy products?"

"I hadn't but hardly arrived when this gal came up to me and said she admired my manly bearing—as who doesn't?—'cept she offered me fifty plat to pose for a statue. Didn't tell me it was one made out of butter 'till it was too late, and by then I was gonna make my play for the leftover butter. I didn't know there'd be drama…"

"I should think on track record alone you'd suspect!"

"So I reckoned, what's an hour or two? And I could use the money in the games of skill and chance that always spring up in the vicinity of a fair. If I won, I could buy somethin' with flanges on for Kaylee, and if I lost, wouldn't be my money anyhow. So that's my tale. What I want to know, is what brought you to the fairgrounds—wouldn't think it was your idea of enjoyableship—and how'd you know about Saffron's wiles?"

"I wouldn't have been at the fairgrounds if I weren't trying to protect you!"

"Well, mightily obliged. That's part one. How 'bout the other one?"

"I didn't know it was going to be her! She disguised herself, and she used yet another name."

"Yeah, the girl up and deep-throated a 'What to Name the Baby' book. But what were you doin' with her under any of her floral and smelly sobriquets?"

"Our encounter was…professional."

Mal tipped his head back and guffawed. Inara narrowed her eyes and glared.

"So, you had it in mind to kiss her some more?"

"I never kissed her the first time, you…you…rapscallion! And why did you barge in here, anyway?"

"Came to tell you not to worry, we'll loop on back an' get your friend the Shepherd, day or two once the smoke clears. Always glad to learn about additional comicality, though."

"Oh, he's no friend of mine," Inara said. "He just fired me. And I daresay **Colonel** Book can take care of himself."

"The who fired you from what?"

"As if you didn't know," Inara said. "Pretending that I was an Ambassador to embarrass someone who was pretending to be an unworldly clergyman."

"What was he, then?"

"He was my controller."

"You're tellin' me you're some kinda backroom boy when you ain't got boys in your back room? This ain't funny no more, 'Nara."

"It wasn't funny to begin with, Mal. As if I would ever have stepped foot onto this heap if I didn't need to keep a low profile to maintain my cover."

"Then it was you that called Dobson down on us?"

"No, it wasn't…interagency cooperation has never been our….their strong suit. As Dobson proved by concussing the Colonel. Oh, and by the way--just try punching **me** , and see how far it gets you."

"Black garter belt of the twelfth dan, huh?"

"There's more to Companion training than cha-no-yu. And that is precisely why I wanted to warn you to get out of the way before What's Her Names caught up with you."

"So why'd they fire you?"

"Perhaps you wondered about how easily the Sheriff of Paradiso and Captain Harken let you go?"

"Hell, no, I didn't, I lost my shirt both times."

"And this time you lost your pants, for a mere fifty platinum. The decision was made by MI-5 that I was no longer reliable, because I had lost my….objectivity."

"Woulda thought it was a long time since you was an objective."

{{Well, if that isn't the quintessence of Malcolm Reynolds}} Inara thought. {{Whether you tell him any Parliamentary secrets or not, you still want to kill him.}}

"So they fired you for bein' sweet on me? I'm flattered." {{Always leave 'em sputtering}} Mal admonished himself, and headed out of the shuttle to get started on supper.


End file.
